The Boycott China call seems to be working across the country as according to the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) estimates–during the one-month Dussehra-Diwali festive season that ended on Saturday, sales increased to more than ₹72,000 crores ($9.7 billion). The apex body of the traders’ union which represents 4,000 traders’ bodies and more than 7 crore traders across the country claimed that festive period sales rose by more than 10.8 per cent year-on-year, indicating good prospects for small businesses. The trader’s body collected the sales data based on the reports gathered from 20 different cities, including top metros Lucknow, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Jammu and Jaipur, among others.
Based on reports from the aforementioned 20 cities across the country, the body suggested that the sales have led to an expected loss of $6 billion (~ Rs 40,000) to China.
“There was a countrywide support for our campaign to celebrate ‘Hindustani Diwali’ [Indian Diwali] this year by boycotting Chinese products. The traders and people of the country gave a strong & big jolt to China along with the lesson not to take India for granted,” said Praveen Khandelwal, the CAIT secretary-general.
In October, the body had predicted that the Galway valley clash and the Boycott Chinese goods movement were expected to make heavy dents into the Chinese market and if the fresh numbers are anything to go by, the paper-dragon has been given a good beating.
In the last few months, CAIT has become the leader of the boycott China movement by ensuring that not a single Chinese product is imported during festivals. The two big festivals before Diwali- Raksha Bandhan and Ganesh Chaturthi had also seen negligible imports from China.
Slowly and steadily, the Indian manufacturers have successfully replaced Chinese products without many glitches in the market, while the Modi government has actively supported them. The consumers around the country have started to understand that Chinese goods, though cheaper, have no durable life, and buying them means contributing to China’s economy and ultimately funding the death of Indian braveheart soldiers.
Reported by TFI, when the India-China border clash heightened due to continued Chinese aggression, CAIT had decided to boycott Chinese goods worth more than 1 lakh crore rupees– 13 billion dollars approximately– by December 2021. CAIT had prepared a list of 3,000 items which included toys, gifts, FMCG products, confectionery products, clothes and watches, as superior indigenously manufactured alternatives of these items were available.
Keeping the December 2021 deadline in mind, CAIT is likely to launch its e-commerce portal Bharat E Market next month to bring its traders’ community online even as it continues to take on Amazon and Flipkart over their alleged malpractices in business.
While the armchair economists continue to remain pessimistic of the country’s ability to bounce back on the economic front, the consumers having shopped their hearts out even during the pandemic are making sure that the economy takes no further dip. The contraction in the economy as predicted by RBI is for the July-September quarter only. However, the festive period started from early October, and going by CAIT’s estimates, the lost ground could be very well be made up here.
As for China, the consumers around the country have started to understand that Chinese goods, though cheaper, have no durable life, and buying them means contributing to China’s economy and ultimately funding the death of Indian braveheart soldiers. And thus the sharp decline in purchasing of the Chinese goods.